HHI is $275,000-300,000 depending on bonus. PITI is $2,300 - bought 13 years ago, put 20% down on a very modest house (have paid cash to make some improvements over time), and refinanced to a 20 year mortgage with very low rate a couple of years ago.

To OP - I'm in the Chicago suburbs with one son who is late elementary and one son is about to start high school. To echo another PP, kids do get expensive again as they get older. Not to the same extent as during the day care years, but once the day care payments stopped, I started saving as much as possible in 529s to make up for getting a late start on college savings. Mine don't do expensive sports, but their music lessons are expensive, feeding/clothing them is more expensive, I will likely be paying for car insurance for a teen driver soon (and considering buying another car). YMMV may vary on this point, but I think for a few years I could have gotten away with spending many weekends away at a vacation place, but my kids have commitments and preferences that would make that harder now, particularly for my older son. The traffic going through Indiana to get to Michigan is also awful unless you manage to time it just right! We just came back from a week at a lake in Michigan, so I get the draw, but, at least for us, renting makes much more sense than owning.

$290K HHI. $3K PITI. It was $3.5K when we bought with $220K HHI but we were able to refinance and bring it down.

For diversity of perspective: 5300 at 5.75. Hope to refi sometime.

Anonymous wrote:$300K HHI
$2800 mortgage with 3 yrs left on a 15 yr mortgage.
Bought a shack in Vienna and did an addition and a couple of bathrooms remodels.

So you paid for the addition and renovations in cash? No HELOC or anything?

We pay $2800 a month but I think the required amount is less.

$1630/month, but I bought in 2010 and refinanced in 2020 after my divorce for a rock bottom rate

$225K HHI and $2,800 PITI.

Ugh $6300 we bought a great house in January. HHI in the low $300s so outside the requested range, but no other debt and we just paid our last PreK tuition before our youngest goes to Kindergarten next month so we have even more wiggle room coming. Looking forward to hopefully refinancing when rates go down.

We bought in 2016 when we were 26 years old and our HHI was $125k. Our goal was to find the best potential home for our future family. We bought a 5bd/2ba on a great corner lot next to a park in a good school district. It was (some parts still are) straight out of 1964. It had the original kitchen and baths, but we bought from the original owners who had an 8in thick binder of every single manual, warranty, repair, etc that had ever been done.

We put 20% down (yes of our own money that we saved) and our PITI is $2600 with a 2.5% rate. 7 years and two kids later our HHI is $275k. We renovated the bathrooms ourselves. Kitchen is still original. We'll be here forever.

I am the first college grad and homeowner on both sides of my extended family and it feels good!

$300K HHI
$2800 mortgage with 3 yrs left on a 15 yr mortgage.
Bought a shack in Vienna and did an addition and a couple of bathrooms remodels.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone here so cheap? $2,500 PITI on a $250,000 income, really?

The guidelines say you shouldn’t spend over like 35% of your income on housing, but you guys are at damn near 10%.

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I'm wondering if folks had family money or other help to put down a big down payment? We bought 7 years ago and couldn't find anything at that monthly payment that had decent schools and wasn't a really far commute to work.

My husband saved for our down payment before he met me. We got married when I was 24 and he was 31 (2006). I guess he really did not spend a lot of money when he was single haha. We bought our first house in 2009.

Anonymous wrote:What about credit scores or general range? I'm guessing everyone is doing pretty well though some have mentioned a lot of debt.

I think mine is near perfect.
We have mortgage, two car payments, and my student loans ($29K left). No credit card or other debt.

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone here so cheap? $2,500 PITI on a $250,000 income, really?

The guidelines say you shouldn’t spend over like 35% of your income on housing, but you guys are at damn near 10%.

Yet, somehow with 3 kids in fairfax county - and saving for retirement and college - I don’t feel like we are rolling in the cash.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the old people chiming in

yes, this is a parents forum and many of us bought when our kids were infants and we wanted more space. now it is 10 years later and we literally answer the question posed. not all of us moved, most of us moved up the career ladder, nearly all of us have 2-3% mortgages. Housing in DC has appreciated on average 50% nominally since 2014, but single families have appreciated even more. So those 2000-3000 PITIs represent a house today that is over a million, but was bought 600k maybe with 5%-20% down - potentially on slightly lower incomes.

when we bought we were at 25% of incomes, now we're like 10-12%. We've refinanced and our incomes have simultaneously gone up. This is a pretty standard lifecycle trend. Now some people did move and upgrade homes, but median homeowner tenure is 10 years, so many are still in their first homes.

So tired of the holier then thou old people

300k HHI, 5900 PITI at 2.25% interest on a 30 yr